The Louvre in Abu Dhabi and Other Stories We're Reading

French architect Jean Nouvel poses next to the model of the future Louvre Abu Dhabi. Photo:Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

If you’re not too busy looking at boobs, here’s what we’re reading this week in news, politics, and culture. Snowden is profiled by Wired, and makes (further) claims concerning the NSA’s surveillance practices. Outside magazine touts the value of ’un-education.’ And Vice’s Molly Crabapple speaks to the foreign workers behind some of the most ambitious cultural building projects in the UAE.

To ’un-educate’ one’s child is to reject mandatory schooling, relying upon natural curiosity in its stead. Author Ben Hewitt provides in-depth reasoning for why he has decided not to educate his children in a classroom—or force them to study at all.

As western institutions such as the Louvre, the Guggenheim, and NYU build outposts in Abu Dhabi, undertaking massive building projects, the working conditions of the laborers there worsen. Despite multiple protests by workers, construction companies in Abu Dhabi continue to engage in exploitative practices, confiscating passports, utilizing hiring services that charge recruits exorbitant fees, and forcing workers to scrape by on as little as $150 a month. What is the cost of culture in the UAE?

Kenneth Jarecke’s famous photograph, commonly referred to as Incinerated Iraqi Soldier,_ _depicts precisely what you would expect. The post-mortem portrait has today become synonymous with the grim brutality of the Gulf War. At the time of the photograph’s taking, however, no one (except London’s Observer) would publish it due to its graphic nature. "If I don’t take pictures like these," says Jarecke. "People like my mom will think war is what they see in movies."

Does one ’read up’ from _Fifty Shades of Grey _to the works of Joyce or Faulkner? Or is this just hopeful thinking? Tim Parks explores this literary hierarchy in conjunction with the sheer pleasure of reading.

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